When you sign up for a baking adventure, in my experience, what you usually expect to get is some name-brand chef who gives you a recipe, maybe even has all of you make it together, and walks around schmoozing and handing out advice and wine while one of his underlings passes out the savory hors d'oeuvres to keep everyone going until after the ( Read more... )

Two months since Rudy did a flying Dutchman when his safety line snapped while he was out working on the external antennae array, way up high there where there were no safety net floating forty meters out, where the beacons were all turned off because otherwise they could interfere with the signal. He should have remembered that his beacon was off ( Read more... )

Feeling a strange urge to write a Sleeping Beauty/Rapunzel-retelling with them as vampires. It's all about the roses and the blood-drinking thorns.

How odd.

Also, must resist urge to write vampire stories--at least "ordinary" vampire stories.

The soft rustle of fabric made Elizabeth crane her neck to see the lady. The pretty lady was visiting Grandma again. She always knew when it was the pretty lady, because her skirts were the only ones that made that particularly rich rustling noise. Grandma wasn't happy to see the lady this time, but Elizabeth didn't know why. Grandma was ( Read more... )

The doll was made of mud, with two betel nuts for its eyes and shiny cowry shells for its teeth. It blinked mud-covered lids like the tops of clay pots over the bright shining betel nuts, and she knew it had worked. She squatted beside the doll that was nearly as large as her, and she hoped it had worked well enough. Her feet dug into the clay ( Read more... )

Old feet shuffling in the dust blew up a breeze that wafted in front of the hut. Old woman looked up from the pot she was stirring and shook her head. Old man, he be like a zombie, she thought, watching the blind man move past her door. He move, but he not think about why he move or where he going. He move because it all he know. Poor bastid. ( Read more... )

He crouched in the shadows of his cave, growling softly. He could smell intruders outside. There were three of them, two males and a female. He growled softly to himself. They could not hear him, but as if in answer, the female gave a cry of her own. Not happy--a shriek, nearly a growl. He felt her rage as if it were his own, back when he had ( Read more... )

Anne Marie was a good girl, everyone in the village agreed. She worked hard, she was sensible without being stodgy, and she was pretty in a homespun way with red apple cheeks bright blonde hair that outshone the shun, and a figure that promised that she would not give up in the middle of a task. Pierre was also a good boy, if a bit wild. He would ( Read more... )

Ice fringed her lashes like crystal mascara. Her lips were painted blue with cold. Her skin bore the frigid touch of winter despite the summer heat wave that was baking the city. Lou bent down and touched one gloved finger to her cheek. He jerked his hand away, startled. It wasn't just makeup. Her skin was cold as ice, as if she'd been saving ( Read more... )

The shell cracked wide and from the yolk uncurled the chicken of space, who stretched his wings and uttered a proud crow that cracked apart the heavens. Li-Ling crouched and stared at this tiny fowl with a black-and-white galaxy in his eyes and the sheer color of the nebulae in his plumage. "What are you, little one?" she whispered. "Where did ( Read more... )